Some spice for spring

Salads may seem like food for the warmer months – but sometimes winter cravings must be satisfied – particularly as we edge towards spring. Often it’s just a simple tomato and mozzarella salad to perk up a cold afternoon, served with warm sourdough to mop up the juices and scattered with sea salt flakes.

At other times it might be a wintry salad of pears, rocket, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and honey and a healthy amount of a beautiful blue cheese like Benleigh crumbled in.

Normally, though, I go for something Asian – one of the salads or ‘yam’ in Thai, either served hot or with enough chillies to put some fire in your belly and drive off the coldest weather.

These warm salads sum up all the things I love about Thai food. Spicy with birds’ eye chillies, aromatic with refreshing lemongrass and pungent lime leaves, with a perfectly balanced sweet, sour and salty dressing, savoury with the deep mellow flavour of fish sauce.

About

Name: William Leigh
Age: 30. Just.
In between catering for private functions and making a mess in the kitchen, I'm a food-obsessed traveller on a one-man eating mission around the world.
Anthony Bourdain is my food hero, and his 'Kitchen Confidential' is among my read and read again books. I couldn't live without a good knife, a pen and paper or Thai food. I hate it when my cakes stick to the side of their tins. I love my food mixer, my spatula and my ice cream maker with a passion verging on lunacy.
My favourite things are gooseberries and mangosteens, but I've got a weakness for hot dogs in soft white buns smothered with cheap ketchup and bright yellow mustard.
I live in south west London but my heart lies amid the colourful, noisy 'sois' of Bangkok.